Queue more whining from whittingham over why he got toes for the media job http://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/queensparkrangers/fb_news.php?storyid=19068
In fairness to Clive I think he's seeing what some on here were moaning about in august, we seem rudderless even with the great TF. Beard & co aint doing a good job are they? And to add insult to injury I think clive would do a far better job than Ian "bring out the gimp" taylor.
I post over on LFW and have read Clive's reports and read his oftern passionate and darkly humorous comments for a number of years. Clive and Paul Finney and a few other fans who post on these types of forums are the "known" always go home and away, die hard APR fans who live and breath QPR in a way that I do not and cannot. There are obviously others less well publicized who are the same. The problem as I see it is that no matter how much a club puts on a public "fan friendly" face and says it listens to the fans, Premier League football is simply a business now, not a sport or a game. No matter how good the intentions were by Amit Bhatia and TF when they first got involved, investors want returns on their investments and therefore the "corporate" entity has to ensure it strikes a balance between screwing their consumer for as much as they can without driving them away - and guess what in many cases Football Clubs are like Tobacco and alcohol companies but with probably higher numbers of addicted consumers to take advantage of their addictions. The likes of Clive and others are the alcoholics who are complaining to the drinks companies that they are not being treated with enough respect and don't get enough freebies or discounts for being loyal "consumers". And here is the disconnect, the intelligent and articulate ones might accept their is an argument that a club is a business, but they are still hanging on to their stance that the club is about the fans first and that the fans are more important than anything else in the club. Well to my mind, the Corporate entities don't see it that way. It is about promotion of the brand, and obtaining maximum revenues. I would hedge a bet that someone in the Finance department sat down and did the math of whether they would sell 16K FA Cup 3rd tickets at £15 as against 10K at £25 just after Christmas and an expensive away game. Go with the best deal for the company not the consumers. So I can see why Clive vents his frustrations, at the way loyal "supporters" get treated like shi'te, but that's consumerism for you in the modern dog eat dog world.
